ISLAMABAD/ GENEVA: Speaker National Assembly Sardar Ayaz Sadiq has said that the Kashmir issue was not only a threat to peace and prosperity of South Asia but also to the entire world.

“Peaceful settlement of Kashmir issue in accordance with the aspirations of Kashmiri people is imperative for the peace and development of the region,” said this while addressing the 135th General Assembly of the Inter Parliamentary Union Assembly in Geneva, Switzerland.

The NA speaker said that gross violations of human rights were occurring in every part of the world.

“Ominously, situations of human rights violations are spiraling into outright conflict within and between countries,” he added.

He said that this was the responsibility of parliamentarians around the world to ensure that the cycle of human rights violations and conflicts were broken.

Sardar Ayaz Sadiq urged that we needed to ensure delivery of the fundamental rights of people, as enshrined in every democratic country’s constitution. If parliaments fail in this primary task then outright violations of rights are inevitable and conflicts become unavoidable, he said.

He said that the parliament of Pakistan was actively engaged in further strengthening the human rights of women in our country. The creation of an independent National Commission on the Status of Women and a National Commission on Human Rights through Acts of Parliament are major achievements in Pakistan, the Speaker said.

He informed that over the past ten years, the parliament had enacted around two dozen bills, to safeguard the rights of women and children.

He further said that the presence of all-parties Women’s Parliamentary Caucus, consisting of 87 women parliamentarians, had ensured a balanced gender perspective in the legislative work of the parliament.

Sardar Ayaz Sadiq said that Pakistan has ratified seven core international human right treaties at the international level.

“We are also fully engaged in various human rights fora in developing, monitoring and implementing international human rights norms. This reflects Pakistan’s commitment to international human rights standards” he said.

While addressing the assembly, the speaker said that the peace cannot prevail without addressing the discrimination and violence too often unleashed against people demanding their just and natural rights.

“In our part of the world, peace is imperiled by the violence unleashed against the people of Indian Occupied State of Jammu & Kashmir. The people of Occupied Kashmir have been under general curfew” he said.

The speaker paid tribute to the continuous efforts of the brave Hurriyat leaders and their families and particularly mentioned Yasin Malik for his persistent freedom struggle for Kashmir. He added that heart wrenching accounts of the plight of innocent Kashmiri women and children in the face of vicious brutality inflicted on them by Indian security forces has left us speechless.

He said that such barbaric acts perpetrated on innocent Kashmiris by Indian armed forces surmount to breech of all local and international human rights doctrines.

He lamented that India had employed brutal practices in the occupied valley including unprovoked firing with shotgun pellets, attacking ambulances, hospitals and funerals, clamping curfews, blacking out media, detaining Hurriyat leadership, closing down offices of Amnesty International and other International Human Rights Organizations and refusing to allow UNHCRs’ fact finding mission in Indian Occupied Kashmir to gag the Kashmiri freedom movement.

He thrashed India’s lame claims of being democratic and secular and stated that it didn’t even allow the people in Kashmir to offer Eid prayers.

He hit out at India’s jingoism aimed at Kashmir freedom movement and called it a pretense to repress the freedom movement which has gained fresh momentum after the Shahadat of Burhan Wani. He said that Indian efforts to bury the indigenous Kashmiri movement under the façade of terrorism are a malicious attempt to silence the voice of thousands of suppressed Kashmiris.

Sardar Ayaz Sadiq reiterated that Pakistan never has and never will back away from supporting peaceful resolution of Kashmir issue under the auspices of the UN Charter.

He said that all Parliamentary parties are united in their support for the Kashmir cause, as being strongly reiterated in the ongoing Joint Sitting of the Parliament. He informed that both houses of the Parliament have passed more than half a dozen resolutions to strongly denounce the reprehensible acts of unprecedented state terrorism by Indian forces in the occupied Valley.

While concluding, he urged the international community to take notice of the deteriorating situation in Indian Occupied Kashmir and seek condemnation of the Indian brutalities at the highest level.

The speaker called on India to end the inhumane repression as early as possible and resolve the issue in accordance with the UN Security Council Resolutions, which allow Kashmiris to exercise their right of self-determination under a UN supervised plebiscite.